Science, Technology and Values: Promoting Ethics and Social Responsibility

The paper discusses the limitations of engineering ethics as frequently implemented in practice, with a focus on how activities are carried out without considering whether the activities are themselves ethical and the gap between legality and ethics. This leads to the following two central ideas of the paper. The first is the need for engineers to both be aware of and critique their own values and to be able to widen their perspective to that of the 'other' i.e. marginalised and minority groups and the environment. The second is the relationship between individual and collective responsibility and the need for support for ethical engineers.